Contents

Purpose

The usability assessment of the ALA website that we undertook this fall
has been completed and is available as a PDF document. At this point, we want to build on the results of this report to develop a vision and an outline of a plan for moving forward on important changes to the website.

To that end, a planning retreat was held in Chicago on Monday, December 18, 2006. The basic purposes of the retreat were to answer the question, "What would we do if we were starting with a clean slate?" and to develop a vision statement and an outline of a plan for the ideal website to serve our diverse needs. Retreat participants will consist of members and staff, many of whom also participated in stakeholder interviews. In addition, we will also have some "fresh eyes" among the participants.

While we know we will not be able to implement all the recommendations from the group immediately, we do plan on moving forward with as many as possible within the next 3 to 6 months.

The retreat was facilitated by Elizabeth Buie, Principal Usability Specialist and Director of Interaction Design at UserWorks, the company that conducted the usability assessment. In order to make sure that the planning process and the development of future directions for the ALA website will be as transparent as possible, we have established a blog for discussion and this wiki for gathering background material and outcomes. The notes from the Web Planning Retreat are archived on this site, with comments invited from outside the group.